


Coming Up Roses

by Antigone2



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 01:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6833053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigone2/pseuds/Antigone2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So," Usagi said thoughtfully from underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, "It's a patch of dirt."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Up Roses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irritablevowel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irritablevowel/gifts).



> Takes place in the It's You (I Fell Into) universe, between the end of the last chapter and the little epilogue at the very end.  
> Honestly you do not need to have read that fic to read this, just know it was my silly little UsaMamo office AU.  
> Birthday girl Irritablevowel asked for "OTP, slice of life, gardening and It's You (I Fell Into) companion piece" so here we go.  
> (Also this is completely unbeta'ed... sorry IV, I hope mistakes don't ruin the experience)  
> Happy Inauspicious Birthday!! beware the black cat

 "So," Usagi said thoughtfully from underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, "It's a patch of dirt."

Mamoru laughed from beside her, eyeing his brand-new community garden plot - empty except for patches of weeds and some potted plants he dropped off earlier which were haphazardly scattered about the small space. "I guess, yeah," he said, and smirked. "But it's _my_ dirt." 

"So, like, I didn't know you were so into gardening," Usagi said, watching Mamoru as he crouched his lanky body down, considering a potted rose bush that hadn't been transplanted yet. "Any other random interests I should know about?" she wondered out loud, pushing her sneakered toe into the ground a bit. It _was_ pretty nice dirt.

He grinned up at her. "Hmm," he said, pulling a box of gardening tools over toward him and handing Usagi a trowel and spade. "Well, there's haiku poetry, world cuisine, foreign languages, astrophysics...," Usagi huffed a little, a smile growing on her mouth. She already knew about most of those things, and some others he wasn't mentioning - like his fondness for cheesy zombie movies.

Mamoru quirked an eyebrow. "You," he added to the list, and she took the spade out of his hand, a blush heating up her face despite herself.

"Okay, so what do I do?" she asked, changing the subject.  She surveyed the ground in front of her with pursed lips.

"Weed it, maybe?" he said. "This area is a bit overgrown."

With a quick nod, she bent and got to work. It was harder than it seemed, the roots of the coarse plants were stubborn, and refused to yield to her halfhearted pulling.  Bracing herself on her heels, she wrapped both hands around a particularly large vine and pulled as hard as she could - only to stumble backwards with a yelp and land on her bottom, with nothing but a few leaves in her fist to show for her trouble. Her hat fell over her eyes and she took it off, tossing it toward the supply box in frustration.

Usagi felt Mamoru's gaze and looked up to find him watching her, a smile dancing around his lips and an amused look in his eyes. That same look from their schooldays, and from when he was first hired at her office - that look she'd originally written off as smug and condescending, the look she now knew was utterly adoring.

 _And_ smug and condescending.

"What?" she demanded, blowing an errant strand of hair off her face in frustration.

"You are such a city girl, Usako," He shook his head, still smiling to himself, as he went back to patting dirt around the base of the rose bush he'd finished planting.

"We grew up in the same place!" she said, throwing up her hands.  Mamoru laughed. "Well, how do _you_ know what you are doing?" Usagi challenged, wiping the dirt off on her khakis with a huff.

He looked up at her with a crooked smile. "I read a bunch of books about it." At her narrowed eyes he laughed again, turning back to his plant with a shrug. "I like to go to the botanical gardens, I've made friends with some of the gardeners there. Sometimes they let me help out. I learned a lot."  His eyes were soft for a moment, far away. "It was peaceful there." Then he blinked and met her eyes, smiled again.  She smiled back, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a smudge of dirt.

"Here," he said, handing her a pair of gardening gloves, "these may help."

He was right. The grip on the gloves made pulling the weeds much easier, and it wasn't long before she cleared the whole patch and moved on to a particularly rugged looking bit of bramble. It looked at if it'd maybe been squatting there in the patch of garden since before it _was_ a garden, resolutely hanging on to its little corner of the world with all its might. Usagi attempted to dig beneath it a bit with the spade, and reached one hand to wrap grab at the base of the stem- "Ouch!" she cried, pulling her hand back.

Hissing between her teeth, she stood up and poked at the scratch along her wrist, where the prickers had nicked her - it was pink, but not deep enough to draw blood - and just outside the thick glove's protection.

Mamoru appeared next to her in a moment, taking her hand in his and making a sympathetic sound.

"It attacked me," she said, looking up at him and pulling her lips into a pout - mostly for effect.  Her shoulder brushed against his chest, as he stood slightly behind her, lifting her hand up to inspect it more closely. 

He pushed the hem of the glove up with his thumb, running it along her wrist, just above the cut.  The feeling of his touch on her skin made her forget the (admittedly mild) pain. And, for a moment, and she had to remind herself where they were - especially when he lifted her injured wrist to his lips and kissed it gently - just below the actual scratch. Usagi fought to keep from losing herself to the puff of breath along her pulse point, the heat from his kiss still sitting on her skin, tingling.

"Um," she said. He lifted his gaze to met hers, and the slow burn in the blue depths of his eyes made her heart thud almost uncomfortably in her chest. "Mamo-chan?"

"Hmm?"

"Can I not weed anymore?"

He laughed, breaking the spell.  Then, he handed her a packet of seeds. "Here, do you think you can manage putting these in the ground? One inch deep, three inches apart..."

"I think I can manage that," she said, making a face at him, but smiling.

Usagi watched as Mamoru knelt to inspect her attacker plant with a curious frown. "Are you going to avenge me?" 

"Actually, I think I might keep this one...," Mamoru said, looking at the leaves with an impressed expression. "This is notoriously difficult variety to get to take root -- the person who owned this plot before me must've had a real green thumb..." he murmured some more to himself and Usagi just shook her head and returned to her planting.

They spent a long, amiable time just working separately but near each other, in the quiet of the garden.

Usagi poked a hole in the dirt with her finger, and then dropped in a seed, closing the earth over it with her hands. 'Good luck, little seed,' she thought, and then for a moment she knew why Makoto loved tending plants so much. The neighborhood was quiet, the other plots' vegetation filtering any street sounds. A bird called nearby, and the heat of the sun had long faded as cool clouds had rolled in above them.

'This _is_ kind of relaxing actually,' she thought to herself.  'I could come here again, evil bramble plant notwithstanding, this isn't so ba--'

And that's when the sky opened up.

The rain came in sheets, and without warning.  Usagi considered, in hindsight, the darkening sky was a warning enough. 'Guess I'm not as in tune with nature as I thought I was,' she thought wryly.  Mamoru seemed as surprised as she did, jumping up and gathering their supplies as rain soaked through his hair and shirt.

"The TV weather report didn't call for rain," he called through the deluge.

"City boy," Usagi teased as she threw her gear into the box he'd brought. 

"Touché," he laughed, lifting the box and swiftly heading back to his car, Usagi trotting after him, feet sinking in the newly formed mud as they made their way out of the large community area.

Mamoru's sleek red sports car looked slightly incongruous in the modest suburban neighborhood street.  He put the supplies into the trunk and Usagi crawled into the passenger seat, shivering slightly.

"What are you doing?" Mamoru asked, as he sat next to her in the driver's seat and closed the door behind him.  Usagi was peering into the backseat as if searching for something.

"Where are your spare clothes?"

"Hmm..."

Usagi bounced a little, brushing her sopping wet bangs from her face. "Don't you have, like, supplies for the apocalypse in here? You had a spare shirt when I spilled pen on me that time."

Mamoru had to take a moment to enjoy just how adorable the phrase 'spilled pen on me' was before sobering up and answering her with a shrug. "I didn't bring a spare business shirt to go gardening," he explained.

"But Mamo-chan, I'm soaking wet!"

He grinned. "I know."

"Pervert," she pushed on his arm, trying not to laugh. Her teeth were chattering just a bit, so Mamoru started the engine and turned the heat on high, before turning back to her.

"You looked so cute out there," he murmured, brushing some damp strands of hair back from her face. "Usako versus the weeds."

"Well, they put up a good fight," she conceded, and he let out a breath that was almost a laugh, cupping her face in his hand. "But ultimately I arose victorious." 

Usagi leaned into his touch, enjoying the warmth of his fingers against her chilled skin. Mamoru's thumb traced her lip, then brushed against her cheek, and she let her eyes flutter closed. He sighed her name against her lips just before he kissed her. He tasted like rain, his lips damp and soft and his hand still warm against her neck. After a moment, he moved to pull back and she pressed her fingertips to the back of his hand. 

"Kiss me again," she said softly. She'd barely finished the words before he'd hummed an acquiesce, and this time his lips were more urgent on hers. She opened her mouth beneath his, losing herself in the heat of his tongue and lips and breath. His free hand moved to her waist, pulling her rain soaked t-shirt off from her stomach, skimming his palm along her belly, around to her hip.

Usagi shifted her body to face him better, curled a hand around the back of his neck.  "How are you so warm?" she mumbled, pressing in against him and shivering a bit despite herself.

"Hmm, I -" he managed to start to say, and then she was sucking ever so slightly on his lower lip and he lost what he was going to say in an incoherent moan. He began to trace his lips along her neck, and Usagi leaned her head back against the seat, watching the rain pounding on the windshield with half-lidded eyes. The gear shift _had_ to be digging into his hip, she thought. She knew from experience that this car was definitely not roomy enough to make-out in comfort.  But _still_...

A car drove past them on the road, the loud engine and splash off the wheels jolting Usagi and Mamoru apart.  Usagi cleared her throat and pulled on her shirt.

"You think I'd be warmer after that," she lamented after a moment.  Mamoru pushed his bangs out of his face and blinked.

"I was going to say," he said, "I think I _do_ have a sweatshirt in the back."

Usagi took the old university sweatshirt gratefully, even as she half-cringed in sympathy at him. "Are you sure you don't want it?"

"That's okay, I have a towel," he said, retrieving a folded hand towel from the glove compartment.

"I knew it!" she cried, "I knew you had everything in here. We could probably live happily in your car for weeks."

Mamoru was attempting to dry his shirt and hair as best he could, when Usagi suddenly pushed the seat back and squeezed herself into the space between the seat and the dashboard.

"Usako, what are you-"

In a flash, she shrugged off her t-shirt and slipped on the sweatshirt, enjoying how warm and dry the material was.

"I don't know why I'm surprised," Mamoru told the steering wheel, "I can't take her anywhere without her getting undressed in my car."

"Hey!" Usagi shimmied herself back up onto the seat, now sweatshirt clad and feeling much warmer. "There have been a number of times I have ridden in your car and kept things perfectly decent."

He quirked a brow and she flushed. "I suppose one is a number," he conceded with a wink.  He grinned widely at Usagi's mock scowl.

"Thanks for coming with me today," he said, as he put the car in gear and prepared to back out of the space.

"Anytime," she said, running her fingers along her neck, where his kisses had left a pleasant tingling.  "I think I am _totally_ getting the hang of this gardening thing."


End file.
